All eyes on Iraq

Life

If truth is the first casualty of war, then on the Internet, the second casualty is bandwidth.

There is a myriad of Websites out there dedicated to bringing you the latest news, views, analysis and opinion on the conflict in Iraq. Keeping up with all the points of view is a time-consuming task, particularly if you only have a 56k modem and you choose to rely on CNN.com, which is ‘optimised for broadband’. Nevertheless, if your are looking for Iraq-related information, you will never be short of information from the massive portals of international media organisations to the blogs kept by individuals.

Salem Pax

There is an amazing difference in both style and presentation of these Websites. Ignoring those of the major media organisations for a moment, one Website in particular has gained cult status with Iraq-watchers: the online Web diary or ‘blog’ kept by Salem Pax at  dear_raed.blogspot.com.  Using a pseudonym coined from the Arabic and Latin words for peace, Salem Pax was believed to be the only Baghdad resident to be filing accounts of the war direct to the Web. Some of it is quite chilling: ‘We start counting the hours from the moment one of the news channels report that the B52s have left their airfield [at Fairfield in England]. It takes them around six hours to get to Iraq… in half an hour we will know whether it is Baghdad tonight or another city’.

The Salem Pax Weblog ceased on Monday, March 24th, leading some to claim he had been silenced by Saddam’s henchmen, but probably his Internet connection is down because of the Iraqi telephone system being bombed. Who he really is, we may never know.

Bias, slant and attention span

There is an amazing difference between how different news organisations report the war. The Arab satellite television station, Al Jazeera has put up a temporary English-language Website,  English.aljazeera.net, dealing solely with what it calls ‘War on Iraq’. American news organisations use different appellations for their war coverage, with Fox News going for ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Fox News has been criticised for being too gung-ho, but  MSNBC.com is far worse, labelling its coverage ‘Target: Iraq — latest news’. MSNBC is also more geared towards Americans with short attention spans: under ‘War at a Glance’, you will find a link to ‘Full Coverage’!

Avoiding the difficulties of choosing between ‘War on/in/with Iraq’, the French Website www.tv5.org, calls its focus ‘2e Guerre du Golfe’. A cynic might say that the French news organisation has too strong an emphasis on the financial implications of the war, but  CNN.com, for example, provides far greater coverage of how the war is affecting the big money men.

The old maxim of there being two sides to every story is borne out by comparisons between Al Jazeera and the American press — US Websites highlighted coalition victories and Iraqi defeats, while Al Jazeera leads with American set-backs and Iraqi civilian casualties — this was particularly apparent on the day US marines took Baghdad city centre, when Al Jazeera’s lead with ‘Volunteers resist US troops’; ‘Pro-US Shia religious leader assassinated’ and  ‘US marines killed in human bomb attack’. Al Jazeera was the only news Website found that did not to use the term ‘suicide bomber’ and, pedantically, the Arab channel is right.

Some Websites do appear to successfully avoid bias. The International Committee of the Red Cross (www.icrc.org/eng) provides daily bulletins and, although mainly focussed on humanitarian efforts, the bulletins provide reliable accounts of where battles are taking place.

Irish eyes

Among Irish news organisations, The Irish Times’s Website (www.ireland.com) probably provides the best coverage. Unlike the rest of the ‘premium content’ to be found on Ireland.com, the ‘War in Iraq’ section can be accessed free-of-charge and is geared towards the thinking media consumer, with a large ‘key documents’ section containing everything from Security Council Resolution 1441 to the Irish government’s Dáil motion on the use of Shannon airport. There are also plenty of (low resolution) photos relating to the Iraqi conflict available for download.

The next best Irish Website for Iraqi war news is  www.rte.ie/news, which has Richard Downes’s Baghdad journal and a, relatively small, section giving background information. One good thing about the RTE Website though is that, unlike American news Websites, the video and audio feeds are geared towards those of us with slow modem connections.  Unison.ie, run by Independent Newspapers, isn’t very satisfactory: no searchable archive and limited Iraq-related content each day.

Shock and Awe

My own news Website of choice is the UK Guardian Online (www.guardian.co.uk), for its overall breath of coverage, its insight and its excellent interactive section. One section,  media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,921647,00.html, is of particular use to students of the propaganda war as it details how false claims and counter claims have been made and how the truth has slowly emerged. The Guardian’s interactive graphics section is superb: well-executed, informative and speedily downloaded. If you want to know how all about Scud missiles, B-2 bombers and other military hardware, this is the site for you. The interactive graphics at TV5.org are also to be commended, particularly the maps provided by Agence France Presse. Avoid the online animations at CNN.com:  they are not very good and they take ages to download.

Finally, if you get tired of news of the hunt for Saddam, why not try a game where you can hunt for him yourself. Quickly downloaded (Campus.fortunecity.com/slope/678/misc/saddam_1.html</a>), the game allows you to splat ‘the world’s most evil dictator’ with missiles, cannonballs and anvils dropped from a great height.

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